Then we find out they are flawed. They took short cuts. Questions arose. It happened to Lance Armstrong in 2012. Elizabeth Holmes made bogus claims about a Silicon Valley breakthrough. Even famed polar explorer Robert Peary, celebrated in his lifetime, faked his biggest “discovery.”

Enter Colin O’Brady. The American explorer (above) has declared himself the first to ski solo across the continent of Antarctica unassisted. But was he?

O’Brady’s 2018 arduous trek captured the world’s imagination, and he’s on talk shows and magazine covers these days promoting a just-released autobiography. But O’Brady skied only about half the distance that Norwegian Borge Ousland, considered by many to be the modern era’s most accomplished polar explorer, did in 1997.

In Aaron Teasdale 's